The Threshold of the Scientific Rationality

The impact of religious-driven world-views in scientific innovation
through the history of science

“The Threshold of the Scientific Rationality” is a Research Project promoted by the STOQ Project at the School of Philosophy of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Rome, Italy) and the Interdisciplinary Research Group CRYF (Ciencia, Razón y Fe) of the University of Navarre (Pamplona, Spain).

It aims to examine the impact of philosophical and religious factors in scientific innovation, examining how they contribute to shape the conceptual basis upon which new scientific concepts and insights originate. In order to achieve this goal, we will consider “threshold” cases: some specific episodes of the history of science in which it is possible to trace the passage from one kind of rationality to another. We aim to examine, first, how rational presuppositions and religious beliefs might establish some constraints on the basic conceptual schemes that underlie the birth of scientific theories, and, secondly, to what extent this conceptual basis has influenced theoretical and practical innovation in science.

The Project will be carried out by a research team formed by philosophers, scientists and theologians that have, at the same time, academic competence in the various scientific fields that will be covered by the research (mainly, physics, biology, medicine and neuroscience). The results of the research will be published as an edited book on the impact of philosophical and religious views on progress and innovation in science.

The Threshold of the Scientific Rationality

A Workshop reserved to Research Project's members will be held in Rome at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, in November, 19-21.

The workshop will provide an occasion of fruitful discussion in order to develop the final version. It will help the researchers to elaborate a synthetic view of the results and significance of the different cases, that hopefully will enlarge the comprehension of the relevance of religious factors in the process the “threshold” of the different sciences.

The course examines the relationship between the methodologies of philosophy and science on the issues of mind, nature and causality. It addresses the question: what are the grounds on which contemporary scientific philosophy, like our culture, takes science to give an exhaustive answer to “the great questions of human life?” Our primary test case will be contemporary analytic Philosophy of Mind, which we shall introduce by reviewing the major revolution in semantics introduced by Frege against the background of the history of philosophy. Twentieth-Century philosophers tried to use the methods of science and analysis to examine exhaustively the phenomena of mind. But as the development of the Philosophy of Mind as a field discloses, this effort leads to a number of anomalies. Responses to the situation include that ultimate science will show the need for the non-material (Chalmers); or that biology will have to incorporate a non-reductive Philosophy of Mind (Searle). Another response is to argue for the usefulness of philosophical approaches outside of science to account for what is not “third person, objective and measurable.” Reflection on the case of mind will allow us to raise questions about methodology. Can and should the scientist refrain from philosophical conclusions and assumptions? What role does philosophy play in the understanding of science’s contributions? We shall test our hypotheses by examining such issues as the question of causality, the principle of inertia, and arguments for a first cause.Homepage Prof. D.B. Twetten